Not surprisingly, the iPad quickly became one of the bestselling devices on the market, with everyone realizing how powerful and useful it can be. A lot of people, mainly business professionals and road warriors who travel a lot, have also reported that it’s very easy to completely replace a laptop with the iPad, and that it’s actually more comfortable that way.
It might seem weird to travel without a full-blown laptop, but the reality is that the iPad has enough processing power and apps on the market to accomplish any task you want, and the touch screen is so good it allows you to type as fast as you would on a small netbook. Here are only a few of the things you can do with an iPad and reasons why it can easily replace your laptop, especially on long travels.
You can type documents. There are a lot of apps on the iTunes marketplace that allow you to open and create any kind of documents in the most popular formats. Even Apple has their own suite, iWork, which includes apps for Word documents, spreadsheets, PDF files and presentations. And with a 10 inch screen, it’s very easy to view and edit them as you see fit.
You can surf the Web and read emails. Of course, you can also surf the Web, read your emails, receive notifications of activity on Twitter and Facebook, and do anything else that is related to the internet. The iPad was conceived as a portable Web client, so to speak, and you can use any online services you want, like Google Docs, Maps, Dropbox, Youtube, and many others.
You can listen to music and watch movies. The iPad is a perfectly capable multimedia device, and you can easily watch any movies in HD or regular formats, using one of the many players on the market.
You can play games. Games look especially good on the iPad, and having accelerometer controls is even better than a mouse in many games (racing sims, for example). The touch screen has a high enough resolution and pixel density to make any game look just marvelous, and there are a lot of great games on the marketplace.
You can even edit video and audio. Yes, the iPad has apps that allow it to edit videos (including 720p HD) and audio files with ease. Not many netbooks can do that, but the use of a mobile OS that consumes very few resources makes that possible on the iPad.
In addition to all of the above, you can do most other computer-related tasks you can think of with an iPad and the appropriate apps. Want to create a presentation to show via a projector on stage? The iPad can do that. Want to edit your photos and upload them to your online Flickr account and Facebook? No problem! Want to connect to your website’s FTP server or SSH and edit some files and fix permissions? There’s nothing holding you back!
As you can see, the iPad is a perfectly good replacement for your laptop. It can also replace your desktop, but its key strong point is portability, and there’s no other device that has the same specs as the iPad in such a small housing.
Even a netbook is harder to lug around and use properly and quickly (because Windows takes so many resources, and the usual Atom CPUs are so weak), and an iPad with 3G and an external keyboard is practically the best choice for road warriors and people who want to travel light and still have access to all of their electronic data.